On A Wing And A Prayer
by ArtisticAbandon
Summary: [Dick's POV, transition piece, somewhere after 89 or so] Dick stares down at the ruins of his life and tries to sort it all out. [Complete!]


Disclaimer: Not mine, never gonna be mine. DC is far too smart to give Nightwing into my hot and devious little hands. ;-) And now that you ask, I'm not that good a singer that I can lay claim to Ronan Keating's 'The Long Goodbye', upon which I have based part of the story and the title.

Summary: (Dick's POV, transition piece, somewhere after #88 or so) Dick/Nightwing stares down at the ruins of his life and tries to sort it all out.

Notes: I can't access the comics canon where everything takes place, so please excuse me if some details/chronology aren't quite right. Let me know and I'll do my best to replace the chapter with a version that has the mistakes fixed. And while I know I said that I wouldn't be writing anything major until my life gets back under quasi-control again, this little plot bunny refused to die or shut up.

Thanks to everyone who's helped me with this, sometimes without even doing anything but being there: Gaer, Charlotte, my betas, everyone at Road_to_Bludhaven, and of course the Bludhaven group themselves. 

  
Now, without any further ado, on with the show...

  
  


* * *

* * *

  
**ON A WING AND A PRAYER**

  


* * *

* * *

_   
I know they say if you love somebody   
you should set them free (so they say)   
But it sure is hard to do; it sure is hard to do   
I know they say if they don't come back again   
That its meant to be (so they say)   
But words aren't pulling through   
Cause I'm still in love with you.   
I spend each day here waiting for a miracle   
But its just you and me going through the myth   
Climbing up a hilll._

This is the long goodbye   
Somebody tell me why   
Two lovers in love can't make it   
Just what kind of love keeps breaking our hearts?   
No matter how hard I try   
You're gonna make me cry   
Come on baby, its over, lets face it   
All that's happening here is the long goodbye. 

Sometimes I ask my heart did we really   
Give our love a chance (just one more chance)   
I know without a doubt that we turned it inside-out   
And if we walked away   
It would make more sense (than self-defense)   
But it tears me up inside   
Just to think we still could try.   
How long must we keep riding on this carosel   
Going round and round and never getting anywhere   
On a wing and a prayer?

...

(this is the long) the long goodbye   
Wooooohhhoooohooo   
The long goodbye.   
(this is the long) This is the long goodbye   
Someone please tell me why

Are you ever coming back again?   
Are you ever coming back again?   
Are you ever coming back again?

  
Guess I'm never coming back again.

The Long Goodbye   
Ronan Keating

  


* * *

  
Wisps of smoke rose gradually into the night air from all around despite the rain plummeting down from on high that only served to disperse it a little sooner than it would've been otherwise. Not even the slow-moving breeze blowing in from the harbour that carried with it the usual 'healthy' aromas of a Bludhaven night made any impact on the determined trendils of smoke, just like it couldn't quite cover the nauseating stench of singed and burnt flesh that clung to the site like a persistant relative.

I knelt on the edge of the roof on one of the adjacent buildings, a lost and lonely man barely distinguishable from the dark and suffocating night that seemed to cling to my skin like the smoke clung to the ashes strewn on the ground below. Barely moving, barely breathing, I must've seemed almost corpse-like for all the liveliness I was demonstrating.

Actually, maybe that was being kind to a corpse.

Neither the unpleasent smells wafting up from below nor the water pelting down on me from above bothered me as I sat in shocked stillness far above the destruction that had so recently marked my life. I slowly raised my chin towards the sky, tiredly turning my face into the rainstorm and allowing the myriad of drops to flow down over my features, past the bags that were no doubt under my eyes to mingle with the sweat and the tears and the grime from living my life too close to the edge for a few too many days. And I welcomed it, embraced the drenching torrents like I would a long lost friend.

The rain, at least, demanded nothing from anyone, least of all me. It just was, and that was all there was to it. It fell from the clouds and soaked into the ground or flowed into a river, eventually to evaporate somewhere and form a whole new cloud to begin the process all over again. No human intervention was ever needed. It simply fell from the sky and covered in water all that it touched, be it flesh or metal, ash or wood, natural or artificial. It did not require that I move from where I sat to prove that I was still alive, that I was still a living and breathing and feeling human being. No lives had be saved because of it, and no lives were destroyed through it -- well, none except for mine.

But that was okay, because I had a feeling it had been raining on my parade for a while now.

I wasn't sure how long I'd been sitting here, but I knew I was long since acclimatised to being uncomfortable and soaked to the skin. I snorted then, a faint but rough noise that somehow managed to escape from my chest and throat but still died a quick death in the silence that surrounded me. I had thought that I was used to a lot of things, that I was used to my life not turning out the way I'd thought it would. Babs could turn me away as much as she liked, because I knew I'd always find my way back to her. Criminals could keep trying to kill me all they pleased, because I'd always land on my feet with my boots in their faces. Yeah, and Halys would always be my haven when everything else went to hell in a handbasket...and I would always be Dick Grayson, no matter what happened to Nightwing.

What a laugh.

Only now was I finding out exactly how wrong I'd been to make those assumptions. Babs had said a flat-out 'no' to the idea of ever loving me or letting me love her. If I wasn't careful, Blockbuster was going to be dancing on my grave in a matter of hours instead of years. Halys had disappeared from the map in a fiery inferno. And now my identity was compromised -- both of them.

It made me feel as if I was drowning in a sea of mire, that all my struggles to escape it and hold my head above the quicksand were only serving to pull me in even faster. All my attempts to show Babs my love for her, to explain to her that the chair didn't matter to me...all my efforts in both day and night to clean up this forsaken town...all the time I'd spent proving myself and carving out my own little niche... And it was all for naught. It was like I'd been pouring my energy into a bucket with a leak that let everything out always just as fast as I poured it in. I'd been fighting a losing battle all this time, and only now was I realising just how fruitless the whole thing had been.

_Like death,_ I thought suddenly, and felt a start of alarm as a growing panic bubbled away in my chest when I attempted to wrap my mind around exactly what that meant.

_Death...I couldn't stop it...couldn't save them..._

I struggled to my feet, adreniline surging and forcing me to move despite the numbing weariness that seemed to shackle me to the roof made slick from the falling rain, even despite the fact that intuellectually I knew all possible survivors had already been taken to the hospital, that there was no possible way anyone else could've survived it but me and Aaron.

I fumbled with my jumplines with cold and numbed fingers, fully intending on sweeping down there to root through the rubble with my bare hands if that was what it took to find a survivor. I had to find someone...something...anything to tell me that this was all just a very vivid dream, a product of my warped subconscious that would fade away the moment I woke up. Surely, the tumult inside me insisted, what had been happening to me in the last few days was too chaotic and painful for it to be anything but a bad nightmare.

But the only thing that faded was the burst of adrenaline as quickly as it had come, and with it went all my newfound strength and balance before I'd even managed to fling out a jumpline. My knees collapsed under me and I fell to the ground, not bothering to hide a wince at the pain that shot up my thighs from the impact with the unforgiving rooftop. I leaned forward, bracing myself on the ground with straight arms and bowed my head, letting it hang down between my arms as I gulped for air and struggled to find the strength just to sit up again.

In my mind, I knew the cold truth: it was no good. It didn't matter what I did, what I tried. There was no one here, no one alive but me.

_...Dead...Everyone's dead...._

I could smell the Death, smell the unmistakeable aroma of burnt and singed flesh with every inhalation I made. It was inescapable, even so long after the inferno had ripped through the building and through my life, destroying and incinerating everything that the fiery fingers had touched. The scent was in my nostrils, on my clothes, pressing down on my chest, and I swore that the stomach-turning tang was even in my mouth and in my pores. It had to be. Although all the bodies had been carted away in those generic white body bags hours ago and that the sun had long since set, I could smell the burnt bodies...and I supposed I always would.

It would be a just penance, I knew, for my failure to save them.

I'd been doing a lot of that lately...failing. The last few days had been one single drawn-out lesson in failing.

Babs was the first one to go, the first to realise that what I had to offer would never be enough. I'd tried long and hard to convince her of my love, that the damn chair meant nothing to me and that I simply loved her for the woman she was, not the one she had been. My words, though, hadn't been enough to pull us through, just like my love hadn't been enough to keep her by my side. She'd said no. She'd said no to Love for now, maybe even for ever.

The worst part about it all was that I understood how it had happened...and that the fault was mine.

See, it'd been on one of the few times that I'd managed to get Babs out of that Tower of hers and into the real world...the first time since the one just before I almost did a number on the The Joker, in fact. Maybe that should've tipped me off that this date wouldn't go to plan, just like every other one we'd tried to have. True to form, Tarantula showed up, and I lept straight into the fray like any good little vigilante would have. Problem was, I did it in part to protect Babs.

Big mistake.

Numero uno rule of our relationship was that Babs doesn't need my protection, that she was an independant woman and I'd better not forget it. It doesn't matter that my quick action probably prevented the loss of innocent lives, or that Tarantula was going to be spending a lot of his time in Blackgate as a result of me.

It would've gone down a lot better with Babs if I'd simply stood back.

But what was I supposed to do? Stay out of it? That was like asking Wally to run at normal speed...or getting the Bat to apologise. I couldn't have stopped my reaction any more than I could stop breathing. It had just been breed into me far too well for me to have taken a step back. I didn't know if I could ever live with myself if an innocent had died just because I hadn't taken action when I should have.

Problem was, I also didn't know how to live with myself when Babs blew up at me and called it all off.

She'd been the centre of my existence for so long, from the moment I'd first laid eyes on her. From that very first moment when she arrived at the Manor to babysit me, I'd known right away that she was The One for me. From then on, everything I'd ever attempted had been for her. I hadn't cared about the age difference between us, that we'd been as close as siblings and then as partners, simply because everything that she'd ever touched and everything she ever did was like gold to me. Right from the start, she'd held in her beautiful hands a part of my heart that no one else would ever be able to claim... Especially now, now that she'd looked herself and that piece of me away in that Tower of hers. Now she was gone, and this time I didn't think she'd be coming back.

There was a saying about that, you know. I heard it in a song once. It went something like: "If you love somebody you should set them free; if they don't come back again then it's not meant to be."

Unfortunately, I'd never been a person for farewells and teary goodbyes. To say goodbye meant that I'd accepted someone was leaving my life, that I wished them well wherever they were going. It would mean that I would miss them but I wouldn't miss them, wouldn't be feeling like a part of me was carved out with a hunting knife and torn to shreds when they left. If I said goodbye...I'd have to accept it. I'd have to learn how to live without them.

Goodbyes and me have never really gotten along. I'd only said goodbye when I really had to, when the people I'd said it to were already gone and I was already left to live without them. Until recently, the people I'd said it to I could count on one hand: my parents...Jason...Joey...and Kory. At least one of them, though, I knew I hadn't meant. My parents were farewelled when I'd only been a boy of nine years, when I was too young to know what all of it had meant. In some ways I was still struggling to accept it and get over it all these years later. It was why I'd kept pushing myself out there every night even when I had nothing to give, but gave it all anyway to make sure no one else would have to feel my pain and say those dreaded words of farewell.

That was probably what had brought all this upon me. Doing too much, cramming everything I could into every twenty-four hour period. Looking back, I could see that the strain had been slowly building up on me till it finally reached critical mass, but at least I'd managed to hide it from almost everyone.

Almost everyone, that is, but the people who had really mattered...especially near the end.

I was sure that Bruce had known, even if he'd never said a word about it -- at least, not in a direct confruntation anyway. Both he and Alfred had kept trying to give me subtle nudges to slow down and let someone in to lighten the load, but I hadn't listened. All I'd heard was 'let someone help' and immediately translated that to mean that they didn't think I could cut it. Even Amy and Gannon had been worried about how tired I'd looking the day before I got myself fired from the Force. Not even Babs had managed to disuade me from sticking to my guns. I was determined to do it my way, even if it meant that I'd end up signing my own death warrent without realising it.

What scared me now was that I might've already done that. Blockbuster certainly was't going to rest until he either had my head on a pike to mount on the gates of this city as a warning to all who came here, or at the very least got to watch someone else do it for him. Either way I was doomed to die a nasty death, and I wasn't so naive to think that it wouldn't be slow and painful.

Not anymore, at least.

What innocence and naiveity I'd once possessed was long gone, disappeared down the growing black hole that had been sucking the life out of me for the last three days of utter hell. I'd clung to that innocence and naiveity despite my parent's death, despite the time Bruce fired me, even despite losing both Kory and the Titans in quick sucession. It had been my lifeline to sanity for so long...but now it was gone. I could feel the lack within me, like I'd just lost a long-cherished part of me or had a limb cut off. All I had left was a growing numbness that threatened to suck me under with every breath I drew.

Everything I'd cherished for so long was gone, lying shattered and burnt and destroyed in the ruins below of the apartment building I'd once owned...and I was left struggling to pick up the pieces and move on.

But where can I 'move on' to?

  
Where do I go from here?

  


* * *

* * *

Fin.  



End file.
